Seaweed Generation

Idea

Introduction

Seaweed has fantastic potential in the fight against climate change. It can absorb carbon faster than the rainforests, and grows in the ocean without the need for freshwater or additional nutrients. It can be used as a sustainable food, biostimulant, animal feed, packaging / plastic replacement, carbon dioxide removal and more.

There's just one catch: it's too expensive!

With current techniques, seaweed cultivation is labour and infrastructure intensive.

Our mission is to develop automated robots to bring down the cost of cultivating seaweed, to unlock its potential as a low carbon base biomass.

In the meantime, we've found a hack. Since 2011, a floating seaweed, Sargassum, has exploded in growth in the Central Atlantic.

Huge mats of Sargassum wash ashore throughout the region each year, where they cause economic and ecological havoc.

We are kickstarting CO2 removals using Sargassum with our first robot, the AlgaRay.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Since April 2022 we have:

Designed, built and tested our solar powered, autonomous robot, the AlgaRay, that intercepts and sink Saragssum before it beaches (UK Patent Pending).

Developed a method of capturing footage and data as proof of the removal (UK Patent Pending).

Implemented the capture

And sinking of Sargassum.

Designed, built and are about to deploy and seed our first AlgaVator cultivation system (UK Patent Pending).

Signed a deal with a Caribbean country (not public yet) to conduct our 2023 Sargassum sinking pilot. In 2023, we estimate that we are aiming to have the capacity to sink 1,000 tonnes of CO2 using Sargassum. We plan to continue this growth through 2024.

Raised $730kk under SAFEs

Received grants from Innovate UK to develop our in sea monitoring systems, and from the CIEL network to develop our cultivation system.

Recruited a Science Advisor Board to advise us, including:

Professor Andy Watson FRS (marine & atmospheric scientist)

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Professor Willie Wilson (marine microbiology)

Professor Bess Ward (biological oceanographer)

Professor Dan Mayor (marine biogeochemist)

Dr Giorgio Dall’Olmo (Earth observation scientist)

Ms Arica Hill (environmentalist and advocate)

Monetisation strategy

Our main source of revenue will be from carbon dioxide removal credits, thanks to sinking Sargassum into the deep ocean, which moves the carbon that it contains into the slow carbon cycle and allows the ocean to absorb additional carbon from the atmosphere.

The IPCC projects that 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide removal will be needed every year to remain below 2 degrees of warming. It is important to note that removals are the removal of additional CO2 from the atmosphere, rather than offsets, which are usually an avoided emission.

The target price for 1 tonne of long term carbon dioxide removal is $100 a tonne, with most solutions being more expensive than that. We aim to reach this price point with Sargassum in a few years, with our pilots in 2023 and 2024 costing $400 a tonne.

As we continue developing cultivation, we also plan to explore selling our seaweed to other sources such as food and use in biorefineries to make bioplastics, biofertilisers and more.

Use of proceeds

Just when you thought this project couldn't get cooler...

1. 30%

To manufacture our ocean robots for as low cost as possible, we're going to 3D print the large parts. Proceeds from this campaign will pay for several (20k a machine) of the large (1mx1mx1m) printers that we need to produce our robots.

Over 6 months we project that this will allow us to build the AlgaRay 70% cheaper than outsourced manufacturing.

2. 30%

Scientific monitoring equipment. We need to gather data to accompany our robots to gather more data on our CO2 removal, and monitor our cultivation areas. Visual, audio and multi sensor data will be needed, the higher quality the better. We have the budget for lots of sensors, but we want more, the more data the better.

3. 40%

Growing the team. We plan to hire an electrical engineer and an additional software engineer to help us design, develop and build even faster.